


Angels, Demons, and Engineers

by WeCouldBeCircumbinary



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Abuse, F/M, Neglect, Substance Abuse, Suicide Attempt, Underage Substance Use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-14 16:58:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/839211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeCouldBeCircumbinary/pseuds/WeCouldBeCircumbinary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Monsters plagued her mind – not the kind that hid in your closet, or under the bed, but rather, the kind of beasts that hid in the cabinets, among bottles and corks. Acquaintances with all and friends with none; that was Roxy’s life.</p><p>She didn't mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bottled-Up Beasts

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably going to be very long.
> 
> I will try and update this at least every Friday, if not more frequently.
> 
> And if I stop updating regularly, PLEASE comment/email/contact me about it. I have an issue with forgetting about the fact that I write these things.

Ever since she was a little girl, Roxanne Lalonde was a tad bit different.

As a youngster, she was bitter and terribly shy. As she got older, she got better, but she also got worse. Monsters plagued her mind – not the kind that hid in your closet, or under the bed, but rather, the kind of beasts that hid in the cabinets, among bottles and corks. The monsters scared her, and moreover, they scarred her – thighs and wrists ruined, blood loss high from the alcohol that thinned it.

Acquaintances with all and friends with none; that was Roxy’s life. A sad state to be in, perhaps, but the young woman barely even noticed through her blurry haze.

Junior High was plagued with drugs and cigarettes and distilled moonshine hidden in water bottles. The school’s sheer lack of attention towards their students was practically horrifying, but none of the kids cared, so few parents did, either. It wasn’t like any prestigious kids went to that damned district. Even Roxy – rich, intelligent Roxy – was considered low-class because of her behavior.

She didn’t mind.

An only child, she got everything she wanted. A daughter of a woman like Rose Lalonde, she got nothing she needed. The girl craved attention like oxygen, hung on anyone who’d show her an ounce of care. She screwed any boy who gave her the time of day and believed any boy who’d tell her they loved her, and when those heartbreaks weren’t enough, even the other team couldn’t sate the attention she needed. Her water, her sustenance, her lifeblood: she needed care and she never got any.

Roxy found that a liquor cabinet was the only thing that would never leave her, the only thing that would listen to her woes and drown her demons when she couldn’t do it herself, and became completely dependent on it. Drank it with her cereal each morning, practically.

The heartbreaks were beaten back by Jack Daniels, the only man she’d ever loved; the abandonment was forgotten with Absolut distractions; the fear was conquered with Charlemagn- er, shit. Champagne.

Hung up on a constant dosage of Hangar One, Roxy soon forgot what it was like to see straight, to hear things like they weren’t underwater, to smell anything but booze on her breathe. It was a bitter life that burned in her throat, and she simply wasn’t capable of caring.

Her first friend was found in the seventh grade; a stout, round girl with bright blue eyes and bubbly laughter and a posh vernacular, Jane Crocker turned out to be the kindest, sweetest thing that ever happened to Roxy. She cared about her. Fussed over the prominence of her bones, kissed her cheeks and promised that things would get better (they never did, but Rox always appreciated a kind lie).

She finally felt loved.

Jane and Roxy were true ‘biffsies fo’ life!!’, and Jane didn’t mind the blonde clinging to her, needing her attention more than anything, because she took the time to understand that Roxy didn’t have anyone else to give it to her. Even in her angry moments, when the Lalonde broke down, freaked out, screamed about not wanting her pity, Jane did not leave her – Jane stayed and helped her calm down.

Then sweet, sweet Janey started working.

They didn’t hang out as much, and Roxy was just too much of a mess for Jane to handle anymore. She tried (bless her heart) but Roxy was too much to handle for anyone.

No one could ever love a girl like her.

No one.

The roof of the apartment complex was cold; the Ohio wind whipped her thin frame back and forth like a sprout in a hurricane. Roxanne was barely much more than bones, some skin layered over, her hair brittle and thin, nearly as wispy as the rest of her.

She was alone up here.

It wasn’t very different from anywhere else, though.

The blonde was wheezing with gross sobs, but the sounds of her wheezing and weeping were swept up in the wind and pushed right back to her, swallowed up by her own self-hate, like a slap in the face for ever being so weak as to cry in the first place.

Roxy shrugged off her jacket, let it slump to the ground, and the slug she took from the bottle in her hand was the last as she let it clatter against the cement below her feet. It didn’t shatter, but her heart did, for the millionth time today, and her shoes were toed off, too, feet sockless and getting soaked from the tattered bottoms of her jeans. Each step was slow and shaky, the rest of her trembling just as badly, and Roxy seated herself on the very edge of the apartment building, legs hanging down over the legs with little care.

“This ‘s it, babes,” she murmured softly to herself with an absent sniffle, pink-glossed lips curled into a hazy, bitter smile. The little tune was hummed under her breath, and as she tipped forward, Roxy imagined someone who cared enough to teach her how to escape the bottled-up beasts she loved so dearly, the monsters that had mastered their spell of Stockholm’s Syndrome over her.

“Fina’bly gonna make momma proud.”


	2. Unwanted Safety Nets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> im back omg im sorry
> 
> i will get better at this someday.

“Y’know, killing yourself is pretty goddamn selfish, blondie.”

It doesn’t even feel like you’re slinging an arm around a teenage girl when you hook the appendage around her torso – she’s like a bag of daggers, all brittle and bone, no meat on her at all. You’re surprised she didn’t just float away, sitting in this wind.

“Oi, whatta fuck, man? Leave a gal to ‘r shit, won’t’cha?” Her voice is slurred and uneven, and the bony blonde is writhing against your arm, treating it like some unwanted safety net, which is exactly what it seemed to be.

“No can do, miss. Sorry, not sorry.”

She looks pissed, and despite her wiry form, it actually hurts like a bitch when she throws awkwardly angled punches at you while you haul her off the ledge and onto sure footing. An arm is kept wound around her, though – anyone who not only has no shame in being caught before jumping, but also fights to try again? That’s definitely not someone afraid of jumping that short little wall if given the chance.

“The fuck are you tryin’ to jump for, anyway, blondie? Daddy buy you the wrong car?”

It’s a low stab, and you should’ve known from the feeling of her ribs that it was pretty fucking far off. You don’t recall your retort, though – you’re already a douchebag, so it’s not like tossing around low blows is going to change that.

“M’name ish fuckin’ Roxy, ‘n I never kno- knew m’goddamn dad.”

Oh. 

Makes sense.

“Mom, then?”

“Hasn’t spoken t’me in nearly six fruggin’ years. Sent me off and send me fuckin’ money when she gots bored or som’in.”

Jesus Christ. You weren’t really expecting that, honestly.

“Why’re you so thin, blondie?”

“Why’re you sho nosy?”

The laugh you let out is dry, but genuine – for all her worth, she’s sassy; you’ll give her that. Right down to the drunken drawl and whiskey-brown glare, the skeletal hand resting on a matching hip like some snarky Drag Cadaver. 

“Name’s Dirk Strider.” You hold out a hand.

“Roxannie Lalonde.” She’d already told you it was Roxy, but the blonde reintroduces herself, anyway – and you know her name isn’t Roxannie, and you know it’s actually just Roxanne, just like you’d know the name Lalonde anywhere.

“So, that’s why mom never chats?”

“Damn straight.”

She’s a curious being, you realize then, as her feeble form tries to stand tall against the wind, eyes lidded and vitreous and no warm, cliché shade of brown, but rather one that burned like the liquor is so strongly resembled. She was on the tall side, and she looked perhaps seventeen or eighteen – Roxy probably weighed as much as a third grader, though. Which he might laugh at, if it was about her being small, and not just tenuous.

Miss Lalonde – poor ol’ Miss Lalonde – eyes you and calculates you and you can practically feel her breaking you down into binary, turning your tangible form into numbers in her head, right down to your stupid anime shades. And surprisingly enough, you don’t even really mind, not at all. You see each wire and hinge and she sees each bracket and command and it’s a simple back and forth, a snap of electricity where almost immediately you realize you hate her because she’s you and you love her because she’s not.

An odd sort of love, though – one where you want to pry open her head in the most hypothetical way possible and calculate why each wire functions the way it does; repair her fractured circuits and soothe her fried motherboard, bring her back to life in a new Rox and a hot mess. A sort of love where you want to reprogram her to be Roxy 2.0, a fully functional female no longer plagued by whatever it was that glassed her eyes just so.

Good.

It’s about time you found a new project.

 

~

 

“Why’d y’catch me?”

You’re sitting against the wall, now, backs pressed to the barrier you’d just tried to jump, both just doing your best not to think how nice it would be to turn into a human pancake down there on the asphalt. 

“ ‘Cause if you could do so afterwards, you’d regret it.”

You shiver. Your recently retrieved hoodie is not nearly thick enough, and though the jacket he wears is thin, a mere wind-breaker, Dirk shrugs off the faded orange piece to rest it over you like some stupid blanket. You don’t mind. In fact, you thank him heartily. It’s warm and smells like cheap cologne and oil and metal and vaguely you question whether the thanking was for the jacket or the save. Settling on both, you grip the zipper-lined sides and hug the thing closer, practically burying yourself in it. He laughs.

“Wha’ssa laughin’ for?”

Another chuckle, and the boy just shakes his head and looks away from you, a grease-stained and knottled hand running through that oddly spiky hair of his.

“You’re kind of ridiculous, Lalonde. I hope you’re aware of that. Just gettin’ cozy with a stranger’s jacket after he saved you from a bed of asphalt?”

“I’s a good tell’a character, a’ight? What, you wan’ me t’try again?”

The look he gives you speaks for itself. 

If you did try, he wasn’t catching you.

There was a challenge there, a test, and for once in your goddamn life, you just do not take it. You are tired and cold and feel sort of sick and there is nothing you want more in the world than to curl up and smell this forever because holy shit this jacket smells awesome. 

You debate telling ‘Tula and Jane all about this dude. Then, your brain lists the complications with this idea. Complications being: 

a) “How did you meet him?” As if she’d explain the jumping off the building part. But that would be the only way to convince li’l Janey that he wasn’t a total creep. Even Latula would be dubious.

b) “Why were you on the roof of a random apartment complex?” They both knew you weren’t a huge fan of stairs. Heights didn’t bother you, but everyone knew this complex didn’t have an elevator. It’s why they avoided it during pranks and the like.

c) “Is he a creep?” You’re not actually completely sure yourself, and if you reassure them only for him to be totally creepy, you’d be sort of screwed.

d) “Do you like him?” He’s interesting. That’s more than you’ve had for a long, long time.

e) “Hello?” Would Jane even pick up the phone? Would Latula even come running to the door the way she used to?   
You doubt it.

Dipping forward onto your hands and knees, you shuffle forward a bit, and you can practically feel Dirk giving you an odd look, until you come back with the bottle from before. He sighs. You ignore him.

The reflection of yourself is a bit distorted, but the bottle has four flat sides, so it’s not as bad. Scotch cuts halfway through your face in the image, but you can still see the make-up smears and tear tracks.

Basically, you look like shit.

You really don’t care.

A half-hearted swipe at your cheeks, and then you’re tipping the bottle back with the rim to your lips, downing lukewarm scotch and immediately feeling the slightest bit lighter. You never felt better. But lighter? Yeah.

“You shouldn’t drink that. You’re not even fuckin’ legal, Rox.”

A nickname already, huh? You snort, and just down another swallow.

“You ain’t m’momma, Dirky.”

He visibly winces at your terminology. You don’t apologize. Just drink.

“Yeah. Guess not.”


End file.
